There Are Both Direct and Indirect Reasons to be Bullish on Renewable Energy

My most recent book, Bullish on Renewable Energy, provides many reasons that the forces of pure market economics are ushering in the various forms of clean energy resources, while they simultaneously bring about the demise of fossil fuels.  Moreover, this whole process is happening far more rapidly than most people realize.  The book’s subtitle suggests readers will encounter 14 different vectors, each a chapter that provides an independent financial driver of the transition from the old to the new.

Looking back over it, however, I see that 12 of the 14 are direct reasons (e.g., cheap wind energy), while the other 2 are indirect reasons (e.g., “public pressure to combat climate change”); they are indirect insofar as they drive consumption of renewable energy by making its competitors more expensive, or, at best, less appealing.  For example, we may have a price on carbon, heightening restrictions of the emissions from burning hydrocarbons, vetoes on pipelines, prohibition against the rape of the arctic, public scorn directed at those who hog resources, etc.

Here’s the reason I twigged on this: young people are extremely liberal-minded and eco-conscious.  I wasn’t sure of that until I saw this the other day: a recent study by Pew Research.

This isn’t going to make my politically conservative mother too happy, but it appears to be the case whether the right wing likes it or not, and, in fact, it may be part of the reason that the Republican party in the U.S. is having such a tough time right now: it’s not connecting with the way more and more people think.   My advice to the GOP is to turn this on its head and totally re-invent itself around the true meaning of “conservative,” i.e., conserving, as in conserving the environment, conserving lives by not sending soldiers into unwinnable wars with bogus provocation, conserving human health by giving up the battle to remove healthcare from tens of millions of Americans, etc.  Might sound radical, but it’s my recommendation nonetheless.